Stolen Moments
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Christmas 1917, a casualty clearing station somewhere in France. And Christine Daaé and her fiancé are at the bedside of their dying ex-lover.


**A/N: ****Written because when I was struggling to write, bogglebabbles sent me the prompt of Charoga and stolen moments.**

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She never imagined, that they would be spending Christmas like this.

Oh, she knew there would be patients. Of course there would be patients. They permeate everything now. She knew they would both be spending it here, but to be spending it _here_—

For Erik—

It hardly bears thinking about. Would not bear thinking about at all, if he were not here in front of her, so still and so pale, hardly recognizable beneath all the bandages.

(They said he was conscious, when he came in. Conscious, and mostly lucid, coughing up pink froth from his lungs, shattered femur strapped up tight. She was on the Officers Ward, and they had been told to keep a bed ready for a commandant in a bad state, but she never imagined—how could she have imagined?)

Any time she let herself think of Christmas, her thoughts were that she and Faisal would snatch a few minutes somewhere, and hold each other, and breathe. Maybe they would sit in the chapel, and not say very much of anything at all, just lean into each other and his side would be so warm pressed against her, and if they were disturbed she would just pretend she was asking him to help her with a patient, and nothing more. And she would sing softly for him, and he would smile and murmur that her voice is beautiful, like he always does, though he is the only one in the world she sings for now. And Katerina is on night duty, so their room would just be her room, Christine's room, tonight, and maybe Faisal would risk it, just for Christmas, risk coming to see her. And together, they would not hear the soft thundering of the artillery in the distance.

Such were her thoughts of Christmas.

At fourteen hours thirty-five yesterday, those plans slipped from between her fingers.

She was tending to Lamarque, who was bleeding again from his stump, when she felt the tap on her arm. And she couldn't move her hands, but she leaned a little closer to Faisal, because it could only be Faisal who would tap her arm like that, and his voice was hoarse in her ear.

"Erik."

The very name pierced straight through to her heart.

The commandant.

Erik.

_Their _Erik.

Not their Erik, not in more than three years (closer to four than three), but he was theirs _once_, he was _theirs_.

(They always knew someday he would leave, always knew. How can you keep caged something that needs to fly? Something that needs to move and run and be free? And they would have gone with him, anywhere, if he had asked, but he didn't ask, he just left.)

He sent them a note from Persia at the outbreak of the war. Not even a note, not really, notation more than anything for a short piece on piano, with two pressed flowers and a strip of blue silk and they knew he was safe.

Whatever made him come back? What possessed him?

(A commandant, his old commission picked back up, and he had been a Capitaine when he resigned it, when Faisal first knew him, so for him to be a Commandant he must be back long enough to have been promoted.)

De Chagny has not said it, not in so many words, but it was in the crease of his mouth, and he has the most telling mouth she has ever seen on a man.

(No recent letter from his brother fighting to the south; new grey in his hair; and the unspoken thing, that Erik is not going to live.)

She has not told anyone, that Erik is an old friend, no matter how true it is, no matter how true in a way they could not comprehend. She does not want them to think she is incompetent, does not want them to think she is too attached, that she might not be able to cope, that she might need rest. If Erik is to die (oh God, oh _God_) then she will be here with him, holding his hand. And he might not be able to feel her, but she _needs _to be here. Where else could she possibly be?

In all her imaginings of Christmas night, she did not imagine she would spend it at the bedside of her dying ex-lover, with her fiancé (secretly fiancé) who was once his lover too.

Faisal's eyes are more green than ever, shot through with the red of his tears.

She is not sure she can cry.

(Does that make her wrong?)

There is just numbness, heavy numbness in her chest, to look down into Erik's face, what she can see of it. The bandages hide his hair, hide the hole the shrapnel tore in his forehead, hide the surgical wounds, and she has seen it all, seen the thin gauze that hides that hole and peeled it back to check for infection, to replace it. Traced her fingers over the lines of stitches, the stubble where they shaved his hair away to operate and try to stop the bleeding, and she wonders is his hair (_was_ his hair) still black, still so thick and dark or if, like Faisal's, it is edged with grey.

She saw his eyes, when De Chagny came to check on him, and they were just as hazel, just as gold, as she remembers, the gold almost hidden in his right eye, pupil dilated with the pressure of the bleeding so that it looked almost black, but his left eye was just as she remembered it.

(If there was any doubt, that this is their Erik, it is dispelled by the ravaged cheeks pitted beneath her fingertips, and he told her once, when they first knew each other, that they were the legacy of old campaigns, and then when they loved each other he told her the truth of his birth.)

He has stopped gurgling up blood-tinged froth with each breath, but she can hear it rattling in his throat. Four of his ribs shattered, puncturing his lung, and the trouble that De Chagny had, to take it all out. The bandages hide even the mottled bruising of his chest.

And the leg. The thigh half-destroyed, not suitable for surgery, filthy with the mud of the trench they pulled him out of and how she's cleaned it and packed it and wrapped it in fresh bandaging, and how blackened the packing was, when she was cleaning it again. And if he lingers, they might have to take it off.

His fingers are so cold, limp between hers, but she remembers them on piano keys, remembers them flashing in candlelight and the warmth of them on her arm, the softness of his fingertips against her cheek and how pale they looked in Faisal's hand but she took both of their hands and kissed them and Faisal laughed his eyes shining, and Erik's smile was crooked as he kissed her.

Those fingers were never made to lie still.

Something lurches in her heart, twists and tightens and she gasps on it, gasps and Faisal's arm tightens around her waist, his breaths hoarse in her ear but Erik isn't dead yet, isn't dead and it might not be tonight so why is she crying? Why are these tears blurring her eyes and hiding his face from view?

Faisal's thumb is gentle wiping them away, and she is grateful for the screens that shield them from the ward. Katerina will not disturb them, not when she is here, not when she is the one who has taken it upon herself to look after Erik as he dies.

(It will be tonight, she can feel it. Feel it in the clamminess of his skin, in the faint throb of the pulse in his wrist, see it in the white of his lips and how his eyes don't stir when she lifts their lids. and hear it in how each breath hitches in his throat. There is death in him, and it is coming quick, and she will be the one to lay him out, she and Faisal both, and she does not know what quirk of fate sent him here and not somewhere else but she is grateful to it, grateful that this is how it will be, how it should be, the three of them together.)

(The three of them about to go back to two.)

De Chagny said to keep him comfortable, and she has given him all the morphine she dares. Any more might stop his heart, and would it be kinder, that way? Kinder, and spare him from lingering?

Her fingers tremble to even consider it, to consider being the one to end his life, and not the shrapnel that tore into his head. To rob him of any chance of ever waking—

He's not going to wake. He's not going to wake because he has not woken at all, not since the surgery, and he was conscious when he came in but by the time they'd finished taking the x-rays they couldn't rouse him at all. And he's not going to wake, but she needs something to cling to, and as long as he is breathing there is that chance, that his lips might twitch or his fingers stir, and how can she take away that chance?

And this time the tears come hot and she blinks them away, and Faisal's fingers gently brush Erik's cheek, so dark against that papery pale skin, and it is not just herself she has to think of but Faisal too, and they always knew they could never keep Erik and maybe it's selfish of them but tonight they can keep him, or try to, and if he lives just a little longer, it will not be Christmas anymore.

And if he is still lingering, then after midnight, maybe then she will lean into Faisal, and whisper of the morphine, and they will do it together, and spare him from struggling, from suffering, and she will sing to him, softly, as he sighs his last breath.

(He always loved to hear her sing.)

Faisal's lips are gentle against her forehead and his tears damp in her hair.

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**A/N: Merry Christmas! And if you've enjoyed this somewhat seasonal angst, please do review!**


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